purification of the members of the household the following rites are performed among the Northern Lhotas. Friends of the dead man build a little shed and put some clothes and food in it. An old man of his clan, on the day after the death, lights a fire in front of the house and sacrifices a cock. The whole household must then come out of the house stark naked and step over the fire. They then enter the shed, where they put on clothes and remain for six days without speaking to anyone. Friends bring them food, and build a new house for them. Among the Southern Lhotas the usual custom is for the household to remain in the old house for six days. A cock is then sacrificed, and they pass through the fire and wash their hands and feet and go to a little house built for them outside the village, where they remain for six days, being fed by their friends. They then again are made to pass through the fire and change their clothes and wash and have their hair cut, after which they are ceremonially clean. The task of the man who sacrifices the chicken is regarded as a particularly risky one. Lhotas near the Sema border usually call in a Sema to perform this unpleasant duty. The Sema is not over nice in these matters and willingly sacrifices the chicken, receiving as his reward any of the live-stock of the deceased which he likes to kill and carry away. He must not, however, take away beads or money which might pass from hand to hand and eventually reach some Lhota. The people of Yekhum were recently very much distressed because some Semas carried off some money which had been thrown away, and complained that they would not know whether any rupee in circulation was from this tainted source or not. If a man is killed by a tiger or leopard the body is not buried, but is put on a platform in a tree and panjis are set underneath. This is the only example of tree “burial” among the Lhotas, [170] though the Aos invariably lay out their dead on machans, and the Konyaks beyond them actually put their dead bodies in trees in certain villages. Such horror have the Lhotas of being killed by wild beasts that if a man who is being chased by an elephant throws down his load and the elephant touches it he may never pick it up again, for it “belongs to the elephant,” and were he to take it back some elephant would assuredly take his life in exchange. Similarly the shaft of a spear broken by a tiger may never be used again, or the owner will have to give his life in exchange for the spear. No direct descendant of a man killed by a tiger or leopard may eat meat from a tiger or leopard’s kill until he has removed the curse by cutting off the head of a tiger. The wife of a man under this prohibition must observe it, but the husband of a woman under it may eat meat from a kill, but must not give it to his wife. No one may eat the flesh of an animal which has been drowned, or has died in giving birth to young. Were Lhotas strictly logical they would